paid specialists in legal, childcare and family planning. Strategy During the 1960s, women in Iran, regardless of class and geographic location, were dealing with issues of freedom, equality, security, recognition and control, and were feeling torn between tradition and modernity, between what they aspired to and what their environment enforced. Members of the WOI came to the conclusion that neither Western feminist models nor traditional Iranian models provided a satisfactory framework for the Iranian women's movement and the role of women; they set out to develop local concepts and strategies to create new possibilities for the role women could play, the aspirations they had, without breaking away altogether from their culture. Originally, the WOI reflected the commonly held view of the complementary of the sexes; and women's rights were requested for the stated purpose of improving their capacity as mothers and wives. In 1973, an ideological turnpoint happened at the General Assembly when Mahnaz Afkhami, then secretary general of the organization broke away from that viewpoint and said “We are each a whole human being, complete in ourselves. We are half of nothing and no one.” Consequently, the constitution of the WOI was amended to reflect this new demand for equality at all spheres, including within the family unit. Overwhelmingly, Iranian women told the WOI that economic self-sufficiency was their first priority. In response, the WOI focused its activities on education, whether literacy skills or vocational training. The classes became the core of the WOI centers. Yet women were reluctant to train for many traditionally masculine fields, such as carpentry or plumbing, on the grounds that it would hurt their chance of marriage. Even after the franchise was won, the WOI determined that language or discourse was extremely importance because rights gained on paper did not amount to much when the language was still essentially patriarchal. In fact, the secretary general says she came to see her task as working to change the patriarchal discourse. Conscious of the fact that Iran's leadership was very sensitive to its international image, the WOI worked to develop international connections with women's groups in countries such as France, Iraq, Pakistan, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China by exchanging, information, and moral support. Eventually, Iran also played a central role at the United Nations First World Conference on Women in 1975 in Mexico City, and formulated key concepts for its World Plan